CHANGE OF SUBJECT

Change Of Subject

July 01, 2007|By Eric Zorn

Bye-bye, booms' blasts?

Is this the year that "booms" gets busted?

It's been a growing July 4 tradition in Chicago for scores of unofficial Taste of Gunpowder festivals to break out in neighborhoods and parks all across the city. Starting at dusk on Independence Day and continuing until around midnight, all the illegal fireworks displays make the city sound like a war zone.

FOR THE RECORD - A graphic accompanying this column contains corrected material, published July 3, 2007.

We're not talking just bottle rockets and sparklers, either, but genuine pyrotechnics and explosions so percussive they set off car alarms.

Last July 4, Chicago's 911 Emergency Communications Center fielded more than 4,200 fireworks-related complaints -- a 25 percent increase over the previous year.

I call this lawless summer tradition "booms," a wry allusion to "dibs," the lawless winter tradition of placing furniture on the street to save a parking place. Both customarily get a nod and a wink from officials.

But this year Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond said the department has analyzed previous patterns of complaint calls and is planning to focus enforcement efforts on problem locations.

"Fireworks are illegal, and they're dangerous," she said. "When we get a cluster of calls, we're going to respond and try to disperse the people who are using them."

Right. I'll hang onto my earplugs just in case.

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Not going: The 4th

I give up.

I thought surely that July 4 falling smack in the middle of the week this year would cause the public to embrace at last my call to move Independence Day to a Monday, as we've done with Memorial Day and so on.

Mid-week July 4ths create an unproductive stretch of arrive late/take a long lunch/leave early days to rival our annual festival of indolence between Christmas and New Year's.

And July 4th isn't the only day fit for this celebration. The Continental Congress actually claimed independence on July 2, 1776. Public readings of the Declaration took place on July 8, 1776.

Yet my readers have rejected my idea to move the holiday by almost exactly the same overwhelming ratio (just under 2:1) they rejected the idea in a click poll last year at this time.

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Posted!

Readers on the July 4 holiday week:

This would be a great time to give everyone that isn't in the service industry an entire week off. While it's not the hottest week of the year, -- that is usually the last week in July, -- just think of all the electricity that wouldn't have to be generated if the factories and& offices shut down! That's a lot of coal, oil and& natural gas not burned. Lower pollution & in the case of oil, less money to the Saudi's to give to terrorists!

Garry

It's fitting that July 4, like Dec. 25, should stay a "movable feast," not tied to an artificial three-day weekend. These holidays are about six months apart, each taking place near a solstice. There's a certain symmetry to this that is very appealing to nature lovers.

Nina

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Here's the rule about flooded basements

The TV news footage of a flooded basement in the 3400 block of North Kedzie Avenue taken after Tuesday's gully-washer (in the memorable words of WLS-Ch. 7 meteorologist Jerry Taft) could have been file footage from any one of scores of floods in this area in recent decades.

It showed a large, oak wall unit, a comfy sofa, an easy chair and other furnishings half submerged in several feet of water: "... tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage," said WLS reporter John Garcia. "It's the third time in less than 10 years for these homeowners."

My sympathy dried up. Here's the rule, folks:

If your basement has already flooded twice in less than a decade, don't fill it back up with stuff worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Since we have so few hills to live on in these parts, our basements tend to take on water. If you can possibly help it, don't put good stuff down there on the floor.

Wall-to-wall carpet? Probably a bad idea. New furniture? Archival photos? Electronics? If it would break your heart or your budget to lose it tomorrow, get it out of your basement today.

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All voices still can be heard

Boy, I wish there were more liberal talk-radio hosts out there, and that right-wing hosts more often matched wits with left-wing guests and co-hosts.

But as suffocating and irritating as political talk radio tends to be, I vastly prefer it to the talk radio we had back in the era of the Fairness Doctrine: Up until the mid-1980s, Federal Communications Commission rules required broadcasters to give equal time to opposing political views.

Serious talk programs back then -- and I covered the radio industry in the early '80s and remember it well -- tended to be earnest and cautious. Hosts generally affected a bland neutrality, so as to keep government regulators at bay.

Theories abound about why conservative hosts now dominate talk radio and liberal hosts seldom seem to draw big audiences, but it's not a right-wing conspiracy.

Station owners are capitalists, not ideologues. The marketplace has created the political imbalance.

This week online I'd like to talk with readers about the movement among some Congressional Democrats to try to revive the Fairness Doctrine -- a move that the House of Representatives repudiated Thursday by 309-115 vote.

In saying last weekend that she wanted to explore the possibility of such a revival, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) expressed nostalgia for a time when there was "much more serious, correct reporting to people."

Yet much less vigorous, entertaining and provocative. With cable, satellite and the Internet there are now hundreds more outlets for spoken and written opinion -- serious, correct, frivolous and irresponsible -- than there were 20 years ago. And the best expressions get and deserve to get the biggest audience.

That's enough fairness for me. What about you?

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